Moving On
by KateToast
Summary: A year after the Diffy's have gone, Keely starts trying to move on with her life. It isn't as easy as she thought it would be. One shot.


**Disclaimer**: Sigh. If only I owned Phil of the Future.

**A/N**: Keely's beginning to think it's time to move on from Phil Diffy, a year after his departure. Takes place post- Back to the Future, contains teenage partying, drinking and the like.

**XXX**

He had told her that he would come back.

He had _told _her. Practically _promised_ her he'd find his way back to 2006. Back to her.

So where was he?

Keely sighed, checking her reflection in the full-length mirror hanging on her closet door in her bedroom. She brushed a hand through her wavy blonde hair and wiped away a smudge of lip gloss from the corner of her mouth, then blinked a few times, checking her eye shadow and liner. Glancing down at herself, she smoothed away imaginary wrinkles from her simple canary-yellow shirt and made triple-sure her jeans looked casual enough- but not _too_ casual, as if she didn't care about her appearance at all.

It was May of 2007, and Keely Teslow was beginning to think it was time to move on.

A year ago this week, she and her best friend had been voted cutest couple, gotten together on the H.G. Wells' news broadcast, and spent one glorious day as an over-the-moon pair. But then Phil Diffy's father had fixed their RV/time machine, and they all had to return home. She'd gotten her first kiss from the first boy she'd ever loved, but that hadn't been enough, because he had been gone the minute later.

Sometimes Keely wanted to make one of those sarcastic tees people get when they go on vacation, though hers would read: 'My Boyfriend/Best Friend Went Back to the Future, and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt'.

It had been a full year. Roughly three-hundred and sixty-five days had gone by in Keely's life without Phil by her side. At first it had been tough, those last few weeks of school when everyone was wondering where her best-friend-turned-boyfriend had gone, and she had had to weakly explain it away with the reasoning that the hardware store had sent Mr. Diffy to the east coast to manage a new store, and the family had had to move quickly. For a while Keely had gotten a little teary as she told this lie, but soon enough she had hardened, using the stage confidence Phil had taught her.

Summer had come, then, the summer they'd planned to spend every second together, not that they hadn't done that already. Instead, Keely had spent the first half moping around Pickford in a complete slump, worrying her mother constantly, until Via and Owen had begun insisting Keely rejoin the rest of the world. The second half of her vacation she went to party after party with her two pushy friends, meeting new people, experimenting with new things. Keely could barely remember now when it first began, but usually she'd leave those parties awfully tipsy or outright drunk, and wake up the next morning with the worst headache imaginable.

She was trying to have fun, because she'd spent two years so wrapped up in one boy she'd forgotten that there were other teens out and about, acting just like normal teenagers did. So once Phil was gone, Keely decided she needed a dose of normal. No keeping a huge secret for another family, no futuristic gadgets, no having to explain regular twenty-first century things to people from 2121. No boy with a quirky smile that could make her heart stop. Just house-parties when parents weren't home, sneaking into her house at two a.m., getting involved in the 'scene' she and Phil had always said they never wanted to be a part of.

Then school had started up again and Keely had regulated the partying to Friday or Saturday nights only, not both, only one a weekend. Via and Owen fell into that crowd easily, and Keely could feel herself meshing, too, especially without Phil there to remind her she didn't need to be wild and crazy to have true friends.

By the beginning of winter the guys of H.G. Wells' Junior/Senior High School had apparently deemed it enough time for Keely to have appropriately grieved for her long-gone boyfriend. Keely had always known she was rather nice-looking, but had never really cared that much beforehand. But soon the juniors and seniors were smiling at her in the hallway, making conversation in class, stopping by her locker to chat, offering to give her a ride home, dancing with her at the parties she attended.

It was most high school girls' dream: being sought after by a number of the cute, popular boys.

Keely wasn't a 'most high school girl', though, and had only flirted lightly, and never actually pursued anything with any of them.

But now it had been a year since Phil had left. Phil. She'd never even gotten a chance to tell him she was falling in love with him. And now, almost 8,760 hours after his departure, Keely wasn't sure if she was still in love with him or not.

Keely grabbed her purse off of her bed and took one last look in the mirror. _You're pathetic_, she wanted to tell herself, but she didn't.

The chances of Phil returning were growing slimmer by the day, and for a while now Keely had been wondering how long he expected her to wait. A year? Five? Ten? Did he think she was going to graduate from high school and go to college and become a news reporter and turn a blind eye to every other worthy guy out there, just because he told her hurriedly before he boarded a damn RV/time machine when they were barely sixteen for her to _wait for him_? Obviously, unless The Giggle was lying, she was going to meet someone, someday, may it be Phil or not, and she was going to marry them.

She rushed down the stairs as she heard a car honk outside. Her mother, Mandy, was out on a date with her boyfriend, another thing Keely really could've used Phil's advice on. Keely opened the front door, locked it, slammed it shut, and rushed down her steps to the idling car pulled up against the sidewalk. She yanked the car door open and hopped in, and they were off. Friday night was party night, this weekend.

Ken Perry was a senior, eighteen years old, about to graduate, and a really good-looking guy. Keely didn't know him all that well and, by extension, wasn't sure if she even liked him like that or not, but when she had realized that she couldn't spend her life waiting for Phil Diffy to come back to the twenty-first century, she'd decided, _what the hell_, accept the invitation of the first guy who asks. That had been Ken.

He blathered on as they drove about the party they were heading to, how awesome it was going to be, how everyone was gonna be there, how hot she looked, how "rockin'" it was that both their first names started with 'K' and 'E'.

Keely smiled for his benefit and nodded along, drowning him out. He was sort of the opposite of Phil, and that was probably why she'd initially agreed, other than her 'first come, first serve' motto. Ken wasn't too bright (Phil was brilliant), his looks were very cardboard-cutout-ish (Phil was cute in a less-obvious, but noticeable way), Ken liked to party hardy (Phil didn't party all that much), he was way into his social status (Phil had never really cared), his number one priority was himself, for the most part (Phil usually thought of others first, though we all slip once and a while). Ken was blunt, Phil was subtle. Ken made Keely feel wanted. Phil made Keely feel loved.

Cars were lined up and down the street by the time they got to the party, teens stumbling about the lawn, loud music and crazy strobe lights coming from inside the house. Keely wanted to take bets on if the cops were gonna have to shut this one down or not. She worried only for a moment about getting caught. The summer before, when she'd first begun going to these out-of-control gatherings, she would spend almost the entire night freaking over being arrested for just standing amidst the chaos, what her mom would say, what _Phil _would've said if he could see where she was. But then she'd learned, soon enough, that if you walked in, grabbed a drink, and let the atmosphere wash over you, the fear would be gone in a snap.

She and Ken got quite a few surprised stares from their classmates as they entered together. Keely could hear their whispers at school Monday as she passed them in the hallway now:

"_So she's moved on, finally!_"

"_She's over that dumb Diffy kid!_"

'"_I know, what was his first name again?_"

"_It was only a matter of time, I mean she couldn't pine forever!_"

"_She bagged Ken Perry, too! What a lucky bitch!_"

"_Or slut. Did you see her at Jared Fisher's party two weeks ago?_"

Ken grabbed two plastic cups from some of his buddies by the keg and handed one to her. Keely gazed down at the yellowy liquid with only mild detest; she'd grown used to the taste by now, and she'd found that after one cup, it wasn't so bad.

For the first half-hour Ken paraded Keely around the house, hi-fiving with his various pals and making ex-girlfriends jealous, each female sending Keely a catty glare. They danced for a while, but the entire time Keely couldn't get Phil off of her mind. What would he think of her, like this? She'd never come to a party with a guy on a 'date' before, she'd usually shown up with Via and Owen or some random other friends she'd acquired in the last year.

Keely spied Via and Owen across the room, also dancing, but laughing and looking happy, too. She felt a pang of jealousy, not because she wished she was with Owen (or Via, for that matter), but because of what they had together. Their relationship was turning into what she and Phil had had, except with different personalities. But the concept was the same.

After making eyes at one of his exes standing by the stairs that he thought Keely didn't see (except she _totally _did), Ken noticed his date's lack of enthusiasm. He'd seen her at parties before, seen how she let loose, but right now, Keely Teslow was anything but loose.

He shouted over the music to get her attention and Keely turned back to him, but she only saw Phil.

It had been a year. A freaking year. Why wouldn't he get out of her head?

In the back of her mind Keely wondered if he was holding up his end of his promise as well as her. Was he on a date with some future-girl right now? Was he falling in love with her?

Suddenly, the room was way too small, and not just because it was packed with sweaty teens. Keely yelled over the roar of the crowd and the speakers that she needed to get some air. Ken seemed to know exactly what she really meant, however, because he simply shrugged, gave her a _'your loss' _look, and boogied on over to the girl he'd been flirting with via eye-contact earlier.

It was only a mile and a half back to her house from here, so Keely decided to walk home, hoping the fresh air would help dissolve the cup of beer and two vodka-laced drinks (though they'd been more alcohol than anything else) she'd consumed in the course of two hours.

Sometimes Keely hated Phil Diffy, usually when she wasn't thinking totally straight like right now. He had been the best and worst thing to ever happen to her. He had shown her friendship and kindness and charity and love. But he'd also forced upon her longing and depression and emptiness after he had left.

That had been the real, true reason she'd never pushed something romantic between she and her best friend before their impromptu and awkward decision to date in front of the school; Keely had always worried about how she'd feel after he had gone. There had been so many moments she'd wanted to yell at him, tell him to look right in front of him, wave her arms or slap him upside the head: '_Hello! Notice me!_' She had thought of them, nearly every single time her heart had leapt with that _feeling_ he'd always made her have; the unexplainable one that she assumed was similar to love.

Keely wasn't sure, now, if it would've hurt more or less if she and Phil had had more time together than just one day.

As she walked through the main street of Pickford where the little shops and restaurants were, Keely wondered if he still had that pepper shaker. She'd never told a soul, but the matching salt shaker was in her closet in her room in a box full of personal things of her time with Phil she'd wanted to keep away from prying eyes.

She caught a glimpse of herself in one of the shop windows, and then shook her head in disgust. Her hair was a mess from dancing, her makeup smeared from sweat, her yellow shirt rumpled and her jeans with a stain of salsa or something on the front of her left leg. Wouldn't the H.G. Wells' news-watchers love to see her like this. (Which reminded her, vaguely, that she needed to research one of the school's lunch ladies, Carol, because her twenty-five year anniversary of working in the cafeteria was coming up. Another reason Keely sometimes hated Phil: she'd been slowly losing interest in her passion, journalism, since he'd gone.)

Keely sighed at herself. Here she was, on the anniversary of the Diffy family's leaving Pickford, walking home at nine-thirty p.m. on a Friday night, still feeling slightly intoxicated, looking a mess, and longing only to be able to walk up to Phil Diffy himself and hug him tightly, making her forget the past year ever happened.

Twenty minutes after leaving the party she turned onto her street slowly, her eyes scanning down the road. The front lights were on at most houses, including her own, but not including the Diffy's old residence. Oddly enough, it hadn't been sold in the year it had been on the market, which Keely thought was someone playing a cruel trick on her. Mandy's car was in the driveway, beside Keely's, which made her steps even smaller. She stopped two houses away and fished around in her purse for a mint and found some spearmint gum, popping that into her mouth. She sprayed herself with some perfume she'd brought along, then touched up her hair as best she could and wiped some mascara from under her tired eyes. She did all of this methodically, without thinking, having done this same process many, many times before.

The door was unlocked and she entered, calling out to her mother. Mandy responded from the kitchen and Keely only poked her head around the doorway to greet her mom, who was sitting at the table reading a magazine with a cup of tea.

"Oh, Keely, this was in the mail slot when I got home," Mandy called as Keely headed towards the stairs. She just wanted to take a hot shower and put on her pajamas and watch _Friends _reruns.

Keely stepped into the kitchen and took the letter from her mother's hand, unsure if she should feel excited or frightened. It could be a stalker note or a death threat… or it could be a notice that she'd won money, or a thank-you card of some sort.

There was a post-it note on top of her name and address:

_Keely Teslow-_

_I got strict instructions from my man Phil Diffy to give you this letter on my way to 1776 for a class trip. It's the real deal, I promise you. Wish you had been home, you're all he ever talks about._

_Phil's friend,_

_Mike Zawinski_

Keely was glad she had gone into the living room to read the letter, because after she'd re-scanned the note for the eleventh time, she gasped loudly and slapped her hand over her mouth. This couldn't be real. But who would know to reference something like time travel in the same context as Phil Diffy unless they were from the future? But it could easily be a hoax…

Yet…

Not wanting to wait any longer, Keely ripped open the envelop with shaking hands and found a hastily-scribbled letter written in Phil's writing, the writing she hadn't seen in so long. Black specks fell from the envelop also, onto the couch and rug on the floor, but Keely paid it no attention as she took in Phil's words:

_Keel-_

_I know this must seem unreal to you right now, reading a letter from me here in 2124 back in 2007, but when my friend Mike mentioned his teacher was taking he and some other exemplary students on a trip to 1776 Philadelphia when the Declaration of Independence was signed, I knew I had to get a message to you, so I convinced him to convince the teacher to make a pit stop in 2007 on this specific day, because today is the day one year ago my family went back home. _

_Time travel isn't necessarily illegal now, because there were so many complaints after it was banned, but you have to get a license and everything and have your time machine inspected every six months, plus you've gotta be eighteen or older to rent or buy one, with a completely clean record. You even have to take a test! Then on top of that, you have to ask the 'time machine council' for permission. They flat-out aren't letting my dad have another one, for obvious reasons, so for now my family's out of luck._

_I miss you. I think about you every day. Now I'm not one to write mushy love letters, so I won't go on for pages and pages about my unyielding love for you, how I can hardly live without you, how I dream of the day I'll see you again. I know it's been a year, and a lot of things can change in a year, but I hope your feelings for me haven't._

_Remember I asked you to wait for me, right before I left? Keep waiting, please._

_Earlier I said you can get a time machine at eighteen. That's one more year, Keel. One more year and then I'm going to get myself a time machine, and I'm going to convince that council to let me go, and then I'm going to travel back to 2008. And you can't stop me. No one can. I'm determined. Seriously. I know if you were here right now you'd yell at me and tell me I can't leave my family, but you know what? I've thought about it, long and hard and all the time. I want to be with you. I want to be the guy who gives you that ring in your future. I want that to be my future, too. _

_So… don't give up on us. Don't give up on me. Because I'm coming home, I promise. _

_Love, _

_Phil_

_P.S. Did you like the pepper I put in the envelop? I grinded it from the pepper shaker you gave me last year._

Keely couldn't breathe. Her mind was going a hundred miles a minute, repeating over, _Phil's coming home, Phil's coming home, Phil's coming home_. He was keeping his promise. He was serious when he told her to wait for him.

If this was a joke, it was the cruelest prank Keely had ever seen.

For at least ten minutes she sat in stunned silence, not moving, barely taking in air. Every bad thought she could have about this letter ran through her mind:

_It's a fake._

_Someone found out the Diffy's secret._

_They're conspiring against me to make me miserable._

_This is from the future, but not from Phil._

_Phil doesn't care about me anymore._

_Phil doesn't love me anymore._

_This is a sick joke._

_Phil isn't coming back to me._

After spending countless minutes re-thinking each thought over and over again until they all ran together in her mind, Keely let her head fall back against the couch and sucked in a huge breath. All of her negative points seemed ridiculous, if she really considered them. How could anyone have found out the Diffy's secret? And if someone had, why hadn't they mentioned it sooner? And why would Phil ever intentionally hurt her? He just wasn't that type of guy. And he wouldn't lie to her.

_Oh. My. God. _

_Phil is coming back._

Suddenly Keely's earlier plans of 'moving on' were tossed out of her mind like trash. She internally berated herself for a while, unable to believe now that just an hour ago she was seriously attempting to get over Phil Diffy. How could she have lost her faith in him? Why did she doubt his promise? And now this letter…

Keely stood, the letter unconsciously still clutched in her hand, and headed upstairs to her room. After she'd flopped down on her bed, still looking disheveled from the party and with a headache forming, she let the note from Phil drop from her hand and glide to the floor. It had been one year since the Diffy's had left and her life had changed.

And it was one more year, less even depending on if Nird-Day was the same day or not, until Phil Diffy was coming back, with or without his family.

And he was coming back to be with her.

Keely sighed in utter fatigue, the events from the day finally catching up with her. With just one letter her entire world had been flipped upside down- for at least the second time in the three years she'd known the futuristic family. But now, she prayed for the upcoming year, her senior year of high school, to fly by.

Because he had told her he would come back.

And he was.

**XXX**

_End._


End file.
